


meetings

by foxmagpie



Series: little gifts [13]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Crime Meetings, F/M, Partners in Crime, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 03:56:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19985704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Beth and Rio meet with prospective associates in Canada. Beth finds she's more nervous than she expected, but proves herself to be levelheaded and skillful during the meetings, impressing Rio.





	meetings

“You ready?” Rio asks, killing the engine.

Beth nods, staring straight ahead, but she’s not seeing anything. 

“You fought for this, ma,” he reminds her. “Don’t get all in your feelins about it now. You just gotta go in there and do what you do.” 

“Which is what?” she asks quietly.

“Nah. You don’t need me to remind you.” She’s been with the other version—the softer version—of Rio for the past, what, twelve hours? It’s embarrassing how quickly Beth got used to it, and how quickly he can shut it off. He’s not here to coddle her now—they’re here to do business. 

Or at least that’s what she’s thinking when Rio interrupts her to run his fingers down the side of her face and tip her chin up. “Let’s go, yeah?” 

Beth watches him reach around and grab his gun to click his safety off. She mimics him, pulling that gun he’d bought for her out of her purse, trying to make sure her hand and her breathing is steady. He’d said he doesn’t expect things to go south, but that expectations and reality don’t always match, that it’s better to be prepared. 

_Can_ she truly prepare herself for this?

She wishes he _would_ remind her what it is she supposedly does. He makes it sound like she does it well, but that doubt that had nearly drowned her a few weeks ago? She feels it trying to drag her right back down. 

_I’m gonna teach you_ , he’d said, believing in her. But he had no idea how quickly the gun had dropped from her hand, as if it was white hot and burning, the moment she realized it was Tyler around the corner, not Boomer—the relief that had spread through her when she realized she didn’t have to do it. 

_I think you could be somethin’_ , he’d told her. But that was because he believed _she’d_ killed Boomer—in reality, she’d only cleaned up someone else’s mess. 

Now he’d handed her a floral engraved gun and believed she was ready to walk into this meeting, and he didn’t even have all of the information. The fact that it’s her own fault, the consequences of her hubris, of her wielding the only weapon with which she actually has any skill—this ability to lie to people, to lie by omission—that only makes it worse. 

Has she lied to herself, too? 

Where is that adrenaline rush, that thrill that she’d experienced in the FBI raid?

Rio steps out of the car into the night. Beth takes in a gulp of air, then follows, because it’s too late. She had asked for this, and whatever happens now... _You get what you get and you don’t get upset._

She’d expected that this meeting would be at some sort of abandoned warehouse or something, something like Rio’s counterfeit operation she’d gotten to glimpse so long ago before it vanished into a puff of smoke, but no. They’re at some fancy restaurant in the middle of downtown. There’s people everywhere, laughing, talking, living normal lives—wearing night-on-the-town dresses and crisp slacks. 

_Great_. To top off all her feelings of doubt, now she feels underdressed. She tries to channel Annie, tell herself, _Jesus, Beth, have a little perspective._

But isn’t she just a suburban bitch whose biggest worries used to be about etiquette and fitting in? 

Rio waits for Beth to catch up with him, and then he puts his hand on the small of her back as they walk up the steps to the entrance together. He has no idea how much even his lightest touch grounds her—an interesting development, considering that she used to have to channel all of her energy into _not_ reacting when he touched her. Now it feels like a fog has lifted. 

“Surely we won’t need to use our guns _here_?” she hisses. 

“Like I said, better to be prepared. I’ve seen guns come out in worse places.” 

They walk up the steps and Rio drops his hand from her back before they step in the door. There’s a line, but he skips it, gracefully darting between the people. They watch him cut and stare at his neck tattoo with disdain. Rio doesn’t even register their annoyance.

“Sorry,” Beth says to each one, trailing behind him. 

“We got a meeting with Fusil,” Rio tells the hostess, some sixteen-year-old child with braces on her teeth. Her white blouse bunches at the back of her pants. She’s definitely not a part of any of this—Fusil doesn’t own this restaurant, doesn’t have the loyalty of his employees. He’s really just out here in public making deals about smuggling drugs into the United States. 

Beth scopes out the restaurant: it’s busy and loud. This isn’t the type of place she would think would be great to have this conversation, but maybe it’s the perfect cover? These are her types of people, after all—men in ties and women in pearl necklaces so wrapped up in themselves, they would never bother to listen in on the conversations of others. 

She’s wrong, though. The hostess leads them to the center of the restaurant where there’s a private room. It’s made entirely of glass, but there are floor-to-ceiling privacy blinds. 

Fusil sits at the table facing them, flanked by a man and a woman, empty plates in front of them. It’s late, but they’ve just finished eating, apparently. 

Fusil is blonde with slicked-back hair. He’s got a square face and some scruff—charming in a Michael Fassbender sort of way, the type of man to which Beth used to think she was attracted. The woman is also blonde with a high ponytail and a form-fitting black dress—an Amber with better, more expensive taste and sharper features. The other man is black, bald with a neatly trimmed beard. 

Besides that man she’s seen in the warehouse wearing a suit and tie—and she supposes, _herself—_ none of them really look like Rio’s sort of people. There are no tattoos, no hard expressions on their faces. Fusil is smiling, although it’s a bit unsettling, and Canadian Amber and the other man just look bored. Beth’s a little bit surprised that this is the meeting with the guy Rio has already worked with before. 

“Rio, you’re just in time.” Fusil pushes his plate away from his body and laces his fingers together on the table. “You’ve eaten, I suppose? Dessert then? The ladies can gossip over some wine while we talk business.” 

Canadian Amber shows no reaction to this, but Beth has to stop herself from frowning. _Think about what you want, what you want to avoid, and the quickest way to get it_. Rio has already told Fusil to expect that he’s coming with a new partner, so she knows this is intended entirely as a slight. 

“Voulez-vous nous excuser, ma belle?” Fusil says to the woman. “Take Rio’s girl to the bar—split a bottle of rosé.” 

The woman scoots her seat back to stand up. Beth waits a beat, sees if Rio is going to say something, but he doesn’t. He’s standing beside her with his hands linked behind his back, seemingly indifferent to the scene before him. 

“Actually, I’m his partner,” Beth says, since he won’t. Her voice is sweet but she can see Fusil clocks her annoyance. “And I don’t drink rosé. If you’d be so kind as to let the waitress know I’ll take a bourbon, though?”

 _Go in there and do what you do_. The adrenaline starts coursing through her veins, and her doubts begin to drain away—what she does is work on her feet, calculating and reacting. That's what he'd meant; Rio's seen her do it with him plenty of times.

“Ah,” Fusil says, cocking an eyebrow. “I see. Rio, you left out some key details about your new partner.” 

Beth decides to lean into his perception of women a bit—she’ll play sweet with a hint of a bite. She suspects he doesn’t like aggressive women, but if she’s too saccharine he’ll ignore her completely. 

“I know. He always undersells my beauty, right?” Beth pulls out the chair in front of her and sits down. Rio smirks, joining her, and the silence crackles for a moment before Fusil laughs. He doesn’t really see her as Rio’s partner, she knows, but maybe if he’s amused by her, he will find her charming enough to entertain. 

“What can I say? We never seem to appreciate what we’ve got.” Fusil shrugs in an annoyingly cocky way—then pinches the blonde’s ass before slapping it as a way to excuse her from the conversation. She nearly stumbles, but she catches herself. Fusil’s already lost interest in her; he turns to the man and says something in French, and then the latter escorts the woman out of the small room. 

The waitress comes in and Fusil gives her their drink order, but not until his eyes trail over her entire body. Since he’s not watching _her,_ Beth scrunches her nose—the waitress must be twenty years younger than Fusil, easy. It doesn’t escape her notice, however, that Fusil already knows Rio’s usual drink order without asking. 

When the waitress leaves the room again, Fusil turns to Beth. “So, we haven’t properly met yet. You are?”

“B—”

Rio interrupts. “Oleander.” 

Beth refuses to glance at him, refuses to let Fusil see that Rio has surprised her with this alias. But where did _Oleander_ come from? Sure, she likes the flower, but the name is kind of ugly. She would have preferred Rose or Lily or—

“Let the lady introduce herself, Rio, come on,” Fusil reprimands mockingly. Despite Beth’s indifferent reaction, Fusil has picked up on the fact that there was a lack of coordination between them. “You know how they hate when we talk over them.” 

Beth laughs politely although she sort of can't stand this guy, and Rio nods as if Fusil has given him something worthwhile to ponder. Beth can tell it’s an act—can Fusil?

“So, _Oleander_ , tell me your story. I know Rio’s, of course, but I’ve come to know him as a man that works only with a variety of underlings and associates. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with a _partner_. How did you manage to lure him to fall into bed with you?” He grins lavisciously and takes the pointer finger of each of his interlocked hands and taps them against a divot in his chin.

Beth flashes a smile at him, as if she finds the double entendre amusing, trying to think how honest she should play this. Luckily she’s saved by the waitress appearing with the drinks. As soon as she’s back out the door, Rio swoops in. 

“She robbed me blind.”

“Twice,” Beth adds charmingly, as if she’s reminding a boyfriend what color her sweater was on their first date. 

“Twice,” Rio assents. 

Fusil chuckles. “Interesting meet-cute,” he says. “I must admit I’d be intrigued, too.” One of the corners of Rio’s mouth tips up just slightly. Beth feels Fusil’s gaze fall and linger at her chest.

“Then—” Beth starts. 

“However,” Fusil continues, ignoring her. “I’ve never tasted pussy good enough to give it half my business.”

_It?_

Rio rolls his shoulders back, and Beth is rendered speechless. Rio had tried to prepare her, she thinks, but she hadn’t thought that it would be like this—most of her experiences with sexism are insidiously benevolent. Dean had put her in a box, yes, but he was worshipping some concept of her womanhood as wife and mother. It was all wrapped up in compliments that made her feel small, even ungrateful for not appreciating them. She’d expected to be patronized, not dehumanized.

_Sometimes standin’ up for yourself is the right thing to do, sometimes lettin’ things go is the right thing to do. Just depends._

Beth shakes herself off and deadpans, “What a shame.” 

Fusil’s eyes narrow. “Ah, see, but I’m not sure it’s worth it.” He turns to Rio. “Your thoughts?”

“I’m thinkin’ we should talk business,” Rio says smoothly. 

“But, see, you’ve lead me to believe business and pleasure are one and the same with you,” Fusil retorts. 

“You got a problem with the way we run our operations?” Rio asks. Beth sees him flex his fingers on his thigh underneath the table, out of Fusil’s sight. Like Beth, Fusil has noticed Rio’s use of the plural. 

Fusil chuckles, then says seriously, “See, you act like I’m being intrusive, but what happens to _our_ agreement when there’s a lover’s spat? Men are fickle creatures, women maybe even worse.” He tuts. “She’ll grow tired of sucking your cock, you’ll grow bored of fucking her.” He scans Beth, looking for her face to crumple, but she’s immobile. He continues in a tone of mock sincerity: “But at that point, I will have made deals with _both_ of you. Which am I to honor? To whom am I loyal?” 

“You got nothin’ to worry about,” Rio says, and Beth releases the breath that had caught in her throat. She takes a long drink of her bourbon. 

Fusil wants to make them say that when it all goes to hell, his deal with be with Rio, not Beth. He wants to make Rio say that he’s the one that’s _really_ in charge, that Beth is just a tagalong. He’s trying to rattle them, trying to find where they fracture.

Beth’s frustrations make her suddenly clear-headed and bold. “You said yourself that you know Rio’s history—that in the time you’ve known him, he’s only ever made deals and had people working _for_ him. You seem like a smart enough man,” she says, locking eyes with him and lifting one eyebrow, “so I assume you must know that if he didn’t want to have a partner, he wouldn’t. I’ve already proven myself to him—he’s held a gun to my head more than once and yet here I am. Now, either you trust Rio’s judgment or you don’t. So, do you intend to keep wasting our time? Because we have other meetings.”

Beth can feel Rio’s eyes on her but she can’t look at him. Is he impressed or pissed? 

Fusil rests his chin on his linked fingers. “‘Trust,’” Fusil repeats. “A funny word to use in this business. With a history like that, you two trust each other?” 

“Partners have to trust each other,” Beth says, parroting Rio’s earlier statement to her when they’d promised that they would earn each other’s. They hadn’t yet, not fully, they’re walking on ice, but they can’t let Fusil see this.

“Yes, they do,” Fusil agrees, taking a sip of his wine. He turns to Rio. “But _do_ you?” 

“We here, aint we?” Rio asks, voice clipped. 

“Not quite an answer,” Fusil points out. 

“Yeah. I do,” Rio says, and Beth knows it’s just an answer for Fusil, but she feels a warmth spread through her. 

Fusil smiles that unsettling smile again. He eyes Beth again, and the look is penetrating, but it’s not sexual this time. “ _Should_ he?”

Beth thinks about inviting secret shoppers into his business, about getting him arrested, about setting a brick on a gas pedal so she should figure out what the hell he was up to. Sorting his pills on her dining room table into bead sorters, breaking into his apartment, stealing back Boomer’s body so that he couldn’t hold it against her anymore.

She swallows.

“Yes,” Beth says, trying not to let her doubt eke through her voice. “He should.”

Silence blankets them for a moment, and then another, and then another. Beth feels a pain shoot through her leg—she needs to shift, readjust. God, she needs to _blink_ even. But she doesn’t. 

“Alright,” Fusil relents. “Then let’s talk business.”

* * *

“What you think of his proposal?” Rio asks when they’re back in the car and on their way to the next meeting. 

“Disgusting,” Beth says, wrinkling her nose. 

“No, not what you think of _him,”_ Rio clarifies. “The proposal.”

“ _Disgusting_ ,” Beth repeats. “Him, his proposal, all of it.”

Fusil’s master plan was fairly solid, Beth thinks, but horrifying. Having extensive ties with the local Greyhound Bus depot, Fusil knows the ins and outs of what areas of the busses are checked and searched at customs. And the _one_ area of the busses that is _never_ checked. 

“So you think we shouldn’t do it?” Rio asks, looking over at her before his eyes dart back to the road. He’s genuinely curious. 

“I didn’t say that,” Beth says. “I just… don’t want to go digging through—through— _excrement_ to get our product.” 

“‘Shit,’ ma, you can call it ‘shit.’” He laughs. “We ain’t gonna be the ones gettin’ our hands dirty. One of the perks of bein’ the boss.”

“Which means more people on the payroll,” Beth says. “So we pay the dealer for the drugs, Fusil for his role in smuggling, and your boys for retrieval.” 

“Yeah,” Rio says, but he sounds impressed that she’s thinking a few steps ahead. “But in this case, they’d be our boys.”

“Oh, they would, would they?” Beth’s eyebrows dart up. “You’d reveal to them that the ‘pussy is good enough to give half your business to’?”

Rio runs his hand along his jaw and his finger twitches. “I warned you there’s not a lot of boss bitches in this.”

Beth scoffs. “Clearly. But the question still stands. Your boys haven’t been around in a while now. Do they even know that you’re still, you know, _working_ with me?” 

Rio licks his lips. “They know what I tell ‘em.”

“So. The question still stands,” she says again. 

Rio sighs. “No, Elizabeth, they don’t.”

Beth purses her lips. This offends her somehow, that she’s a secret. Like working with her is shameful, like maybe she is the charity case he said she was. He’s mad at her because she has limited what she has told Dean—who is technically at this moment still her _husband_ —about the last few weeks she's spent with him, but he’s been hiding working with her for _months_.

“Stop overthinkin’ it,” Rio tells her like he can see read her thoughts. “There’s a lot they don’t know. Most of ‘em know next to nothin’.” 

“Why’d you stop bringing them around anyway?” Beth asks. She tries to rack her brain to when she last saw one of them. Had she even noticed when they disappeared? 

Rio turns cold. “Elizabeth, this ain’t the time to get into it. We got another meeting. Keep your head on straight.”

Beth nods once. She’ll drop it for now, but she won’t forget. 

“So, what’s the verdict on Fusil?” he asks, changing the subject back.

“No verdict yet,” Beth says. “He’s not exactly someone I would relish working with, but his idea seems pretty sound. He mentioned he’s been running it with some other clients for a while with no kinks. We’ll need to verify that, of course, but I think we should wait to hear what Kostra has to say before anything.”

Rio nods, and there’s a hint of a smile on his lips, like this is what he wanted her to say.

* * *

“I don’t think we should tell Kostra,” Beth says when they pull up a dingy warehouse. It’s not abandoned, though. There’s a large sign on top of the building that says Zadávat Inc., but there’s no indication what type of business that is.

“Tell him what?”

“That we’re…” She remembers Rio making fun of her yesterday for gesturing between them ambiguously and referring to what they are doing as “this,” but really, what words should she use? _Dating_? “...um, sleeping together.”

Rio looks at her like he wants to say something, but all he grunts is, “Aight, fine.”

Beth swallows. “It’s just…” 

“I get it. No reason Kostra needs to know.” 

“Right.”

“Double check your gun,” Rio says, doing the same for himself when he steps out of the caddy. “Never worked with this guy personally, don’t know what he’s about.”

Beth swallows thickly and checks her gun. The safety’s off, and it’s easily accessible in her purse, which is otherwise empty. She'd learned from the drug den not to carry her personal information around with her in these scenarios. 

“So… Oleander?” Beth asks as they walk around the building to look for the side door.

“Yeah, that was my bad. Meant to tell you you can’t go round introducin’ yourself as Mrs. Beth Boland of Arden Park.” 

“ _Ms.,_ ” Beth corrects, and Rio furrows his eyebrows at her as if he wants to challenge this. She cuts him off before he can, though. “Where’d you come up with Oleander, though? Was that on the fly?”

“Is this the time?” he asks, turning to squint at her. Beth chews her lip, suspecting that means it wasn't, but Rio just points ahead of them where there’s a dim light over a door. “There.”

They walk in and the warehouse is full of, well, almost anything you could think of. Tupperware bins and computer towers and lamps and BB8 Star Wars toys—and boxes.

A _lot_ of boxes. 

“What is this place?”

“Dunno,” Rio says. “They’re up in the office.”

Beth and Rio ascend the stairs to an office overlooking the entire operation. Inside there are two men, brothers from the look of it. They’re both skinny with reddish hair and dark eyes. One of them—she assumes Kostra—sits behind a desk, wearing a beanie and a jean jacket over a hoodie. The other lounges casually on an old couch perpendicular to the desk, wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt. He’s cleaning his gun. Kostra is maybe around Rio’s age, and the other is still younger. 

“You Kostra?” Rio asks. “Rio.” 

The man behind the desk nods curtly. 

“Oleander,” Beth says. She wants to reach out to shake his hand, but neither of the men has moved, so she doesn’t. “We’re partners.”

One of Kostra’s eyebrows raises almost imperceptibly, but then his face turns indifferent and he tilts his head towards the other man. “My brother, Krev. Sit.”

Beth already finds that she’s much more comfortable with these two men than she was with Fusil, but that’s not saying much. 

“So,” Kostra says. “Racket tells me you need a new way to get some pills moved into Detroit?”

Beth’s shoulders relax. At least this meeting is getting right down to business. 

“Yep,” Rio says, and Beth looks over at him, like, _Clearly these guys want more than that_.

“And what were you doing before?” Krev asks. His voice is deeper than his brother’s, but he speaks just as slowly. 

“That important?”

“Let’s just say yes,” Kostra says. He pulls a joint out of a drawer and starts lighting it. “Why don’t _you_ tell us?”

It takes Beth a moment to register that Kostra is talking to her. She glances at Rio, who brings his chin down a millimeter, giving her permission. 

“Pills in airbags,” Beth says. “We imported the cars from Canada undetected.” 

“Mmm,” Kostra says, taking a hit. “You want some?”

“No, thank you,” Beth says. 

He squints at her, and Beth feels like maybe he expected her to accept. He doesn’t say anything about it, though. “So what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it sounds like you had a good thing going,” says Kostra. 

“So,” Krev says, continuing the thought for his brother. “How’d you fuck it all up?” 

“Oh,” Beth says, and her heart starts pounding. She doesn’t exactly want to tell them that there was an FBI raid. “We wanted to get ahead of things. Flip our game while the game is still good, you know how it is...” She trails off, feeling like an idiot—the lingo does not roll off her tongue the way it does Rio’s. 

Krev chuckles, running a rag up and down the barrel of his gun. Kostra takes another slow drag.

“That’s fuckin’ dumb,” Kostra says, letting the smoke exhale through his nose. 

“Well…” Beth says, trailing off. 

“‘Well,’” Krev mocks. 

Beth’s tongue feels heavy. They can tell that’s not the whole story, but she’s floundering. The cars were really Rio’s deal—she only helped with distro. She wishes they were interrogating Rio instead of her. She’s not experienced enough to make up details about this on the fly.

“Did Racket fill you in on Rio’s history?” Beth asks instead. 

Kostra and Krev look at each other. “We’re familiar.”

“So you know he’s been in this business a long time,” Beth says. “How long have you been in it?” 

The brothers chuckle, like it’s funny that Beth thinks she has any right to ask.

“She asked you a question,” Rio says, voice cold.

Kostra drums his fingers on the desk. “Eight years.”

“Rio, how many years do you have?” Beth asks. She has a vague idea, but she tries to make it sound like she knows, that she just wants him to clarify for the benefit of the audience. 

“Seventeen,” Rio says, like he’s bored.

“More than twice as long,” Beth says. “And he’s always been one step ahead of the feds. _Always_. His methods may not be your methods—” 

“Nope,” Kostra says, standing up and walking over to give Krev the joint. Krev sets his gun down next to him to take it. “See, we got a good thing going here. We’ve been running our operations with people in Seattle, Portland, LA, Cincinnati with no hiccups. Our shit is good, so we got no reason to give it all up because we're afraid. _We_ don’t get scared, _we_ don’t panic.”

“Our methods keep us safe and our associates safe,” Beth says, hoping that there’s still a chance to salvage the meeting. “We’d like to hear what you have to offer, and if we like it, we'd run with it as long as we think it’s viable and profitable for _all_ of us. This isn’t disloyalty and it’s not fear. It’s smart. The way we do things _ensures_ there’s no risk to your business.”

“Uh huh,” Kostra says. He looks down at Rio from his new standing vantage point, and his lip curls. “But aren’t you being tried for racketeering charges?” 

“And I thought the feds raided the dealership you were using?” Krev asks, the ashes on the end of the joint glowing red as he takes a long, slow drag. 

Beth’s head spins. This whole thing had been a test. How can they wiggle out of _this_? 

“Racket’s got a big mouth, huh,” Rio says, but he still appears visibly calm. 

“Some would just say honest,” Kostra retorts. 

Beth feels unbalanced, like everything’s off-kilter. This is her fault— _she_ got Rio arrested, _her_ dealership got raided. 

“You value honesty, yeah?” Rio asks. “Because I did my research, too. And I know you been in business for three years, not eight. You got Portland and Seattle, but that’s it. You green, boys. Only reason you got such a clean history is because you ain’t been around long enough to make noise.”

Kostra swallows thickly, and Krev’s tries to slowly and discretely move his hand toward his gun.

Rio scoffs. “You plannin’ on shooting all your potential clients that got histories? ‘Cause your pool of clientele is gonna dwindle fast.” He spirals his fingers as if it’s all washing down the drain. 

“The key witness in Rio’s case is dead. I took care of it,” Beth adds, extremely careful of her words. “And our connections—of which we have many—tipped us to the raid before it happened. They found nothing.”

Kostra runs his tongue along his teeth, thinking. 

“You knew about the raid and the charges _before_ this meeting, and you didn’t cancel. So unless you think lying is the more egregious reason not to work with us, you’re just bullshitting,” Beth jeers. 

“Fine,” Kostra says, shifting on his feet. “But we’ll be keeping our eyes on you if we do this deal.”

“We wouldn’t expect anything less,” Beth says. “Because the feeling is mutual.” 

* * *

Beth is buzzing on the way back to the hotel. Tonight had been... Nerve-wracking. Exhilarating. Amazing. She had felt herself pinched on all sides and she had gotten out of it. Gotten _them_ out of it. 

“So, what proposal you leanin’ towards?” Rio asks. He still hasn’t said anything about what he thought about her in the meetings, and Beth is dying to ask, but doesn’t want him to _know_ she’s desperate to hear his opinion. “Fusil or Kostra?”

“Well… both proposals seem good,” Beth admits. Kostra and Krev’s business, Zadávat Inc., is legitimate—mostly. They export various (hollow) items to businesses all over Canada and the US, mostly to small mom and pop shops for a good deal, only some of their items are filled with drugs. “Kostra’s cheaper and there’s no ick factor… Retrieval is easier… but Fusil’s more established. Kostra’s inexperience _could_ be a liability, but Fusil’s entire personality definitely is. With Kostra, we have to find a business to export to, or create a fake one—which seems too risky, considering. Finding one could take time, whereas with Fusil we could start right away.”

“So which one’s comin’ out on top?”

“What do _you_ think?”

“We’ll get there, mama, don’t worry. But you was fightin’ so hard to get to be in on the meetings and gimme your opinion, so…”

Beth exhales. “It’s almost even, so... I’d go with Fusil. Since there’s no delay. Even though I kind of hate him.” 

“Only kind of?” Rio asks, smirking. 

“Well, what do I know? I’m just a woman." Beth rolls her eyes.

Rio’s eyes crinkle and he laughs. 

“So… your opinion?”

Rio pulls into the parking lot of The Broadview. He turns off the engine and rests his arm across the steering wheel and turns towards Beth. “I think we do both. Start with Fusil, like you said. We got people waitin’ on us to deliver, and I don’t like lulls in makin’ money. But we’ll be on the lookout for connections to make Kostra’s deal work—when it does, we can expand, or cut ties with Fusil if he becomes more trouble than he’s worth.” 

* * *

As soon as Beth swings the door open to their hotel room, Rio closes the distance between them and presses his chest up against her back. The door slams shut behind them. He brushes the hair off her neck so that there’s no barrier for his lips, then he slides his hands under her shirt so that he can feel the softness of her belly. 

“Goddamn, ma,” he murmurs into her skin. “You got me so turned on, I dunno whether I wantchu to ride me or whether I wanna fuck you into oblivion.”

A small giggle escapes Beth’s lips. “What’s this about?”

“Nah—nah—don’t pretend to be all coy now,” he says, biting her shoulder. “You know what you do to me when you boss up like that.”

Beth sinks into his kisses, feeling the glow of his praise spread down, down, down. She didn’t know—not really. She’s never allowed herself to think seriously about Rio’s attraction to her, felt if she held it under the microscope too long it would unravel somehow. She closes her eyes and loses herself in the feeling of his wet mouth and sharp teeth working all along her earlobe, her neck, her shoulder. 

“How’d I do?”

“What, you need specifics?” he teases, ghosting his fingers above the waistline of her jeans so that it makes her shiver. “You was quick, smart as hell, and workin’ that mouth in that way I like…” 

Beth spins out from under his touch a bit clumsily, and then she pushes Rio against the wall even more clumsily. He bumps his head and laughs at her until she shuts him up by pressing her curves up against his hard lines and finishing with a harsh kiss. His hands slide up her back, his nails digging into her shoulder blades through her shirt. 

“Oh, you like compliments, huh?” he asks when Beth abandons his lips, stands on her tip toes, and drags his earlobe between her teeth. Her mimics her deadpan to Fusil: “‘What a shame.’”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Beth says breathily, moving her fingers up to the highest button at his neck. 

Suddenly Beth’s head is snapped back when Rio yanks her hair so that Beth has to meet his eyes. It’s not painful, just surprising, especially with the heavily-lidded, serious look Rio fixes her with. 

“I ain’t makin’ fun of you, Elizabeth. Far from it.” The stare is so intense that she has to blink rapidly to avoid looking away entirely. “You was perfect.”

Beth blushes brightly and Rio dips his head to kiss along the tops of her breasts where her skin has flushed red. 

“So what’s the verdict?” she asks, raking her fingers through his hair. 

“On?” 

Still gun-shy about being as ribald as Rio is, Beth says, “The two options you suggested…”

Rio pulls back from her. His hands are at her waist, keeping her anchored and leaning toward him. He cocks an eyebrow. 

“Oh, you mean whether I want you to ride my cock? Or whether I wanna take you from behind and pound my cock into your tight little cunt? Those options?"

Beth’s face bursts into flame, but she doesn’t break eye contact as she clears her throat and says, “Yeah, that.” 

Rio’s eyes burn brightly. “I think I’d like to see what happens when you have your way with me, mami.”

What Beth has trouble saying with her words she communicates easier with her body. She grabs Rio by the lapels and pulls him towards her, away from the wall, and then she spins him so that she leads him walking backwards to the bed. She savors kissing him there, hands working slowly at the rest of his buttons until she pulls his shirt off of him. She runs her hands up his chest, then pushes him—a little more roughly than she intends—down onto the mattress. He falls with a bounce. 

“Damn, ma, you don’t gotta be so rough,” he teases. “I’m delicate.”

Beth laughs through her embarrassment. She leans over him to start unbuckling his belt, then fumbles to pull it off of him. It gets stuck underneath the weight of his body. 

“Move, please,” she asks, tapping at his hip. 

“Fuck, you so hot when you take control,” Rio needles. He grins at her.

“Take off your fucking pants,” Beth says, and she’s startled by how serious her words sound—and so is Rio. His grin turns wicked and then he kicks off his jeans and peels off his socks. 

He’s completely naked before her, and Beth wonders how he does this suavely because now she still has to undress herself all alone standing before him. Triumphantly, Rio crosses his arms beneath his head and watches as Beth begins to strip. 

Rio’s face is a mixture of amused and turned on right until the moment that Beth crawls on top of him and lowers herself onto his cock. She's so wet she doesn't even need to use her hands to position him, she just glides onto him easily. That's when his eyebrows knit together and he moans open-mouthed. 

“Jesus, _fuck_ , how you feel so good?”

Beth doesn’t answer him, just dips her breasts into his face and rolls her hips to take him deeper into her. He takes his hands around one of her breasts and uses it to guide her nipple between his teeth. Beth moans. 

Squeezing her knees against his sides and then increasing her pace, Beth bounces up and down on his cock, faster and faster until she stops suddenly—hovering above him so he’s only inside of her shallowly, just the tip. He makes a noise of protest. Then, very slowly, she eases herself back down, centimeter by centimeter, lulling him into a false sense of a new rhythm. Then, all at once, she drops back down and buries the full length of him into her wet cunt. 

Rio's groan is unlike anything noise Beth has evoked from him before. She smiles down at him and continues fucking him until he can’t take it anymore. In one swift motion, he overpowers her, flips her off him, and forces her to get on her hands and knees on the side of the bed. 

“You drivin’ me wild,” he grits through his teeth, and he plunges his cock back into her roughly, furiously. He runs his nails down her back until he digs them into her hips, holding her steady so that each thrust is so forceful that the moans spilling out of Beth’s throats are loud and jagged. “Fuckin’ come for me, Elizabeth.” 

And Beth’s so lost in the moment and the sensations that she hadn’t even realized she was so close, but she does—she comes basically on his command, clenching around him as she fists her hands into the bedspread. 

“I love fuckin’ you,” Rio pants. 

“I love your cock,” Beth moans, and this one, tiny dirty word from her chaste lips sends him over the edge, too. She can feel it, the moment his cum is sputtering out of him and into her, and she whines in pleasure. 

When he pulls out of her, Beth collapses onto her stomach. Rio flops down next to her, and they lie there, side by side, sweaty and breathless. 

Beth’s muscles are basically jumping and spasming beneath her skin. She’s not sure if she’s ever felt so weakened—or if she’s ever felt so powerful. 

**Author's Note:**

> The ideas for getting the drugs into the US are plots shamelessly ripped from Graceland, because I am crime-illiterate. 
> 
> P.S. So far all these chapters have been un-beta'd, and that's going okay (I think!), but I'm finding myself in need of bouncing around some ideas off someone! I have an idea of where I want the story to go, but feel like a second or third opinion about timeline/how a few things happen would be really beneficial. If anyone's interested in talking timeline/ideas with me, leave me an ask on my [Tumblr](https://basic-eight.tumblr.com/)!


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